Each day I find more and more examples of how people don't think like me. Oh, well.

However, if, like me, you want to be able to watch DVD's on your little Pentium II laptop (IBM Thinkpad 600) every once in a while, then you need a quick way to rip movies from DVD's and shrink them down. The attached script is designed to do just that.

Unlike the rest of the world, Puppy Linux people tend to think more like I do, so someone may have already come up with another way to do this. If so, please chime in: I'd love to find ways to make my movie ripping easier.

I looked at pdvdrsab, but it ripped the movies in a format that I couldn't do a whole lot with if I wanted to edit them. Oh, and I had difficulty using -vob (it insisted I used -vf, which worked well. ) I also found pdvdrsab failed to rip for me much more frequently than mencoder did. Don't get me wrong; I still use pdvdrsab, but this script has helped make life easier.

I could (and sometimes do) rip movies using VLC media player, but that ripped them to an mpg format then I had to shrink them, etc. No matter the variations I used, VLC just didn't suit my needs.

So, after playing around with ffmpeg and mencoder, I came up with a little script that uses both of them and rips directly from the DVD, creates an .avi file (that can be played in the dreaded Windows Media Player if necessary and easily edited in Avidemux), and then uses mencoder to shrink down the .avi file, thus creating a total of two .avi files, one much smaller than the other.

What to do: if you want to run the script, this is the process I find easiest:

1. Initially, copy the script into geany (or whatever text editor you use), save it in your Movies folder, then, using rox-file manager, right click the script, changing the preferrences to make it executable ( you can do this other ways, but I find it is ridiculously easy in Puppy using rox to make scripts active, much easier than chmod'ing things).
2. Put in the dvd you want to rip in your dvd player.
3. Use your terminal and change directories to your movie directory.
4. Determine which chapter title on the dvd contains the actual movie (there are several ways to do this. You can search by each chapter using VLC media player to find the correct one if you want. I find the easiest and most successful way, most of the time, is to run pdvdrsab if you have it installed, tell it you are going to rip the dvd, then see which chapter it selects as the largest one. I then cancel pdvdrsab and run this script. Usually the correct title is 1).
5. Use your text editor (geany) to open "letitrip" and change the movie name and title number as needed (please read what few notes I've put on the script if you need any clarity). Then save it and close it.
6. In terminal type ./letitrip and the script will run. Of course, if you've saved the script under a different name, run it via that name.

The end result is two seperate movie files, both avi's, one much smaller than the other. Using gmplayer (a whole thread or two that can easily be found by searching this forum) I can play these smaller avi files with ease on the PII laptop.

If you don't like something about the script, then feel free to change, enhance, whatever. I just though: hey, it helps me, maybe it will help someone else.

*note: the line that contains the mencoder instructions is one line. The line that contains the ffmpeg instructions is one line.

Code:

#!/bin/bash
###############################################
# LetItRip!
# This little script will rip from a dvd to a
# medium sized avi file then shrink it to a smaller
# avi file. The final result will be two different
# sized avi files.
###############################################

### here you can name the movie. Use dashes for spaces leaving
### nothing blank.
mname=example-movie

### here you can number which block on the dvd the movie is contained,
### usually 1.
title=1

.. or you can use woo-ff on the vob file and specify your output file type (any that ffmpeg supports encoding) and optionally your width (it will automatically keep your aspect ratio - useful in mp4 players to prevent squishing and stretching) ... best of all mencoder is not needed only gtkdialog and only a 3kb pet

I haven't yet added direct from DVD without specifying the vob file or webcam and desktop support, I have the one-liners ready but not the gui integration yet._________________Web Programming - Pet Packaging 100 & 101

I had a total of three blank one-time-writable discs, an external hard-drive full of Puppy.iso files, an assumption that this would require (MU's?) compilation of Mplayer+mencoder+... and worded my question above rather poorly.

Puppy 4.31 (my first selection) apparently does not have mencoder included by default. Using a borrowed laptop, I burned John Biles' TEENpup2009 on one of the remaining discs (thanks, John!) and steve_s' script gave me circa 600MB .avi files.

The script did not give an output of two separate files (one large and one small), but that's okay -- it was the smaller file I was after. Not recommended for a home theater, but perfectly usable on a small traveling netbook.

technosaurus, I'm afraid to admit that I have not even tried woo-ff yet, as I am currently running Gray's Boxpup 4.31 on a small netbook (sans an optical drive).

EDIT to remove extraneous comments: This script works on all discs as I just described, but multi-tasking on the current laptop while it is running causes glitches -- my bad! I am going to try to comment out the ffmpeg line and run the script again. The smaller file, naturally, strips out subtitles (Duh!).

I'll give that a try. The thing that puzzles me is that, when watching the DVD straight from the drive via VLC or Xine, it is an English-language movie (with the exception of the very beginning, which is subtitled in English).

But, having no practical experience in backing up commercial media for longevity's sake (I'm not a pirate by hobby or trade), I've been kinda' shooting in the dark on this project.

technosaurus, where exactly is the latest woo-ff.pet? I have one of your earliest versions, but my copy lacks many of the preset choices you talked about adding to a later version. Several forum searchs have only lead me to dead ends.

I see shinobar has done some work in this direction, too, but open parameter fields are a bit above my level of expertise. Selectable presets like the ones discussed in other (now missing?) threads are what I am looking for.

technosaurus, where exactly is the latest woo-ff.pet? I have one of your earliest versions, but my copy lacks many of the preset choices you talked about adding to a later version. Several forum searchs have only lead me to dead ends.

I see shinobar has done some work in this direction, too, but open parameter fields are a bit above my level of expertise. Selectable presets like the ones discussed in other (now missing?) threads are what I am looking for.

-Roy

I am really not trying to sound like one of those forum jerks (not this forum; other linux forums I've used), but is one of these it?

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